How has it come to this, he would think, zoning on the pixels that flickered like a CAT scan from the screen on his blanket-covered stomach. Regardless of how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep my shit together.

Fundamentally, he knew you couldn’t keep any kind of shit together. Everything was carbon and particles smaller than carbon and those particles were always corroding, breaking, collapsing against each other with the terrible softness of tongues. A rapid, infinite sequence of shifts that were at once fragile and impenetrably brutal. If he felt an uncommon pang of irrational strength, he would try to fight the changes: he would dismantle his power cord, close the screen, his thoughts, his head, and for as long as he could, forget the events, faces, and hips that had come to define his particular disintegration.

He would stay in one place and keep staying still. He would hold his breath and try not to desire it.

Simply absorb fluids.

Keep your shit together.

The dense and desperate oscillations, though muffled, continued unabated, buzzing in directions he wasn’t even aware of, reminders of his task’s impossibility.

He would open his laptop and jerk off and sleep soundly.